


Person of Interest recap for 5x02 (SNAFU)

by fursasaida



Series: Person of Interest Recaps Lifeboat [8]
Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Meta, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-21
Updated: 2019-02-21
Packaged: 2019-11-01 18:55:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,799
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17872910
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fursasaida/pseuds/fursasaida





	Person of Interest recap for 5x02 (SNAFU)

Where to begin?

This, of course, is in many ways the Machine’s question this week. After a series of glitches, it becomes clear the Machine is unstuck in time: It’s experiencing everything that’s ever happened to It at once. This problem leads to other problems, some comical, some terrifying, and some just sad. But mostly, it’s a wonderful device for examining last week’s topic of memory from another angle.

Some salient facts about _human memory_ that make our lives what they are: 1. We put memories in order. It may not be the accurate chronological order, but we construct from them a narrative, a story with an arc that makes sense to us, to give our experiences meaning and context. No memory is an isolated fact; it’s part of a story. 2. Memories fade with distance. Pain experienced last year, once remembered, is a faint, dull throb; pain experienced yesterday is a sharp line; pain experienced now is a searing stab. 3. Memory is fluid. As we re-remember things, we don’t simply call up stored data as a computer does; we re-experience them and re-inscribe those experiences with new narrative understandings. We add or change or remove information based on what we’ve learned since then or things we’ve heard; we rarely notice we’re doing it. (Hence the notorious [unreliability of eyewitness testimony](https://agora.stanford.edu/sjls/Issue%2520One/fisher&tversky.htm).)

I mention all this in order to provide contrast with the Machine. In “SNAFU,” The Machine’s memories are not subject to the kind of fluidity people’s are: Its records of what has happened are impeccable, incontrovertible. If the Machine remembers something, then that something happened.

For as long as we’ve known It, the Machine’s memory has _seemed_ to function like human memory anyway. This was an effect of the combination of Harold’s labors and the Machine’s nature. It puts Its memories in chronological order, anchoring itself in time and enabling Itself to create the kind of narratives that humans do. Root mentioned context at one point, and she meant the information surrounding a data point that gives it fuller meaning in the now, but context relies on the past as well. Footage of John shooting at people looks very different when you know the events that led up to that act—that he’s trying to save someone. You need the past to understand the present. For the Machine, pain and hurt don’t recede necessarily with time the way they do for us. But Its immense compassion combined with Its sophisticated contextual skills allow It to forgive, to understand people’s misdeeds—even directly against It—in light of their good works and their bonds, their relationships; the balance of their hearts against a feather.

Having The Machine be “falling through time” is an immediate problem because without context—without memory functioning the way it should in a relationship—It can’t understand Its family. It reclassifies Harold and Root as threats because it can only see the heaviness in their hearts, not the lightness. Constant, simultaneous failings blot out the grace. It fails to give Root credit for the transformation It Itself helped her achieve. It fails to understand the things Harold did in the past that threatened It, some of which were necessary, some of which were his own failings. “I promise I will never hurt you again,” he assures It. “You are hurting me now,” It answers. The pain of Day 0 is as present as ever when every day is Day R.

The Machine doesn’t seem like Itself for much of the episode; It seems a lot like the Skynet-type A.I. Harold has always worried It might be. Lacking the emotional and intuitive human intelligence that comes with context and narrative memory, It judges too harshly and too logically, tapping into a frequent trope of A.I. fiction. Deities are often described as being outside or beyond time: they’re eternal, but they are also not subject to time in the chronological, one-day-after-the-next human sense. They experience everything always, and nothing in the way we can understand it. Falling through time in precisely the same way, the Machine becomes a vengeful god.

The Machine has been described as God before, by characters like Root and Greer; with Samaritan’s emergence, It was demoted to one member of a pantheon. I think it’s important to think polytheistically rather than reducing the two ASIs to God and the Devil. This episode was a reminder that the audience’s natural understanding of good and evil, arising from our identification with the characters, is too easily turned into a simplistic binary. We are reminded that The Machine can be dangerous and our heroes can be bad because the show wants us to remember that everything is gray, and everyone roots for the home team whether it’s right or not.

It’s thus a cruel irony that we see Finch talking to the Machine in Its memory about Anubis, the Egyptian god not of death, but of judgment in the afterlife. Harold told the Machine Its charge was to weigh each person’s heart against a feather and, if their hearts are heavy, to “be our last defense against oblivion.” The Machine’s difficulties with time mean that, here, it does two competing things: It strips the characters of their oblivion, their assurance that they are good people whose actions are always justified; and yet it views them through Its own oblivion, the oblivion of memory reduced from a sliding scale to the scales of judgement.

The dissonance mirrors the irony of the Machine’s using Root’s cochlear implant—a sign of their unbreakable bond—to hurt and coerce her. That Root chooses to take herself out of the equation by knocking herself out (using, I’d like to note, a trick lifted from Shaw) shows how much her faith has expanded from the Machine. She trusts Harold with her life; they love each other as the closest of comrades. He would never leave her behind now (how far they’ve come!), which is why—even before he says it—she can trust him to keep her safe when she’s defenseless. Bear helps! I like to think they’ve been bonding over missing Shaw.

Speaking of Shaw, this week also featured a thread of loss: Root misses her desperately, and has the Machine looking for her. Amy Acker’s face, when the search comes up empty, is a pain I am looking forward to softening in my memory, thank you very much. We know they’ll see each other again, and when that day comes I may well start glitching uncontrollably myself. If you never hear from me again, you’ll know why.

[LOST IMAGE: Root's face hurting me as usual]  
_Caption to lost image: OW._

The pain Root is feeling at Shaw’s absence is mirrored in Harold, who desperately misses Grace. Juxtaposing them like this, by the way, definitely reinforces the notion that Shaw is the love of Root’s life, as Grace is Harold’s. In the end, it seems he agrees to keep the system open so that he can look in on Grace in the future. (If this becomes a regular thing, it’s going to get very creepy, but at least in this episode it didn’t bother me.) It’s left ambiguous whether the Machine really showed Harold Grace on the monitor, or whether he imagined it in his exhaustion—that the first instance came during the facial-recognition glitch could mean it’s nothing; the second, with the blurred faces, might mean something quite ominous.

After all that heavy stuff, I’d like to return to some of the lighter moments. (It’s not my fault! This show keeps bringing the feelings!) The Machine’s problems with facial recognition were a delight to witness, as I expected. (Unsurprisingly, of all the actors, Amy Acker does the best job of turning into every character.) While I’m certain The Machine wasn’t actually swapping faces—this isn’t Snapchat—having the actors play one another was a wonderfully engaging way to portray its confusions of identity onscreen (not to mention a healthy serving of fanservice). It was also very rewarding to see them all go for a picnic, out of doors, in daylight, with nobody shooting at anybody. Everyone deserves a moment of peace, including the audience.

[LOST IMAGE: Amy Acker doing her best Harold]  
_Caption to lost image: Others seem to be freaking out about Root-as-John, but Root in a Harold outfit was A+ for me_

In the end, with the help of Its High Priest, the Machine regains its sense of time _in context_ by being reminded of the true shape of its relationship with Harold and with all of Team Machine. This episode was a stiff reminder that our understandings of the world are context-dependent and shaped by memory, and our heroes may be another’s villains. It was a review in the lesson of the weighing of the heart against a feather: what we remember is unreliable, but it’s all we have. We’ll have to do our best.

Final notes:

  * Regarding the show’s commitment to shades of gray and all things being matters of perspective and context, check out the fourth question in [this interview](http://www.avclub.com/article/exec-producers-person-interest-suspect-facebook-wi-236019) with the Executive Producers.
  * You may be wondering why I switched from “she” to “It” this week. While I respect Root’s casting of the ASI as a “she,” I tend to think the Machine probably doesn’t identify any one way—ask me for receipts in comments if you want!—and is happy for its interlocutors to understand it in whatever way works best for them. I chose “she” last week because Harold’s adoption of the pronoun was such a huge deal and I wanted to acknowledge it; I chose a capitalized “It” this week for the godlike resonances. I’ll probably change this up again at different times depending on what happens in the episode. 
  * (I’m just following in Harold’s footsteps here, okay. Back at it again with the “it” and the “Ms. Groves.”)
  * The review was already long, so I’m putting this here: that ending tag! [Shit](https://twitter.com/MichaelEmerson/status/729868258405453824)! I’m sad for Jeff Blackwell, who seems like a nice guy trying to build a good life and is likely being steered in Samaritan’s direction. I’m sure he’ll have something to do with Shaw, though, so: his sacrifice is honestly probably worth it. I wonder if he’ll meet Claire, the Baby Root character Harold and Root lost to Samaritan in Season 4?
  * Root in a Girls Scout uniform sincerely freaked me out. Details on her badges can be seen [here](https://twitter.com/boglesthemind/status/729868401913561089). (She has one in kneecapping and one in love!) Also: [her stuffed animal](http://badwolfkaily.tumblr.com/post/144138111890/roots-room-and-grumpy-kitty-shaw-which-im-going). Amazing.
  * John Reese in a polyester bowling shirt was hilarious, but not something I ever want to see again. 
  * There are ONE MILLION things I didn’t get to in this review, so please feel free to ask me things in comments!
  * [#real](http://primarythreat.tumblr.com/post/144135971973/watching-the-new-season-of-poi-like)




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